See to Believe: The $5 Million Meteorite Collection

Naveen Jain with his otherworldly collection at his home in Medina, Washington. (Photo: José Mandojana)

Naveen and his rock collection. (Photo: José Mandojana)

The NWA 6355 specimen is close in bulk chemical composition to the Apollo 16 soil samples. (Photo: José Mandojana)

The Nakhla Meteorite was witnessed falling on June 28, 1911 in the Alexandria region of Egypt. It’s one of three types of Martian meteorites. (SNC – Shergotty, Nakhla, Chassigny). (Photo: José Mandojana)

The Gujba Meteorite fell on April 3, 1984 in Yobe, Nigeria. This is a type of chondrite, related to the carbonaceous chondrites, but with chondrules of metal. (Photo: José Mandojana)

According to NASA, researchers have found that some of the building blocks of DNA found in meteorites, such as the Murchison Meteorite above, were actually created in space — lending weight to the idea that life on Earth began with materials from the cosmos. (Photo: José Mandojana)

The Sikhote-Alin Meteorite fell in 1947 on the Sikhote-­Alin Mountains in eastern Siberia and is one of the largest falls ever observed. (Photo: José Mandojana)

The Tagish Lake Meteorite is 4.5 billion years old and contains an assortment of organic matter, including amino acids, the building blocks of protein. (Photo: José Mandojana)

The Chassigny Meteorite was sighted on Oct 3, 1815 in the Alexandria region of Egypt. It's one of the rarest of meteorites. (SNC – Shergotty, Nakhla, Chassigny) (Photo: José Mandojana)

Naveen Jain isn’t your average rock collector. His home office in Bellevue, Washington, is a showcase for more than 500 specimens, all of them drop-shipped to Earth from outer space. It’s one of the world’s most complete meteorite collections. “I have at least one of every type of specimen,” says the 52-year-old founder of the search engine InfoSpace, digital security firm Intelius, and Moon Express, a company that aims to land a robotic craft on the lunar surface next year.

Jain, who as CEO of InfoSpace rode the dotcom rocket onto Forbes’ list of wealthiest Americans, has spent $5 million to date. He collects only meteorites that someone has seen streaking through the atmosphere, known as witnessed falls. They’re unweathered and uncontaminated by terrestrial detritus, and museums and collectors snap them up nearly as fast as they fall to Earth. Take the Martian brick that fell on Chassigny, France, on October 3, 1815: With only 750 grams extant, fragments can cost $100,000 per gram, or 2,000 times the price of gold. (Jain has a 4-gram piece.)

What does Jain get for his money? “You’re holding something that nobody can get to,” he says. “How many people can say they’ve touched Mars?”